Pomodoro nero (2014)

A few kilometers from Foggia, there is a shanty town inhabited by the army of irregular immigrants who work for the tomato industry. A no man's land where electricity and water do not arrive. In summer, from all over Italy, migrants in search of work rush to Puglia and the shanty town reaches over 800 people. Head down, they pick tomatoes for ten hours a day: a 500 kg box is worth three euros. There are no payroll or rights. The African arms business is managed by a pyramidal system of intermediaries that at each level speculates on the work of the laborers, between the anvil and the hammer of a supply chain that is based on their exploitation and an immigration law which is its main cause. But they, the laborers, are no longer just migrants without papers or awaiting recognition of the right to asylum, also the second generations have swelled the ranks, the boys with a Brescia and Bergamo accent who no longer find employment in northern companies and are forced to accept living and working conditions worse than those of their parents.